001: How To Become A Female Thought Leader In 3 Simple Steps

Have you ever wondered how to become a thought leader?

Discover how to become a female thought leader in 3 simple steps to increase your visibility, influence, and impact. There are tons more tips and insights just like this that can increase your career and results. Hit the PLAY button above to hear the full episode. If you have any of the following questions about how to become a thought leader, you’ll get the answers in this podcast:

Interested to become a thought leader?
How to define the value you provide?
Want to increase your thought leadership?
What are thought leadership examples?
What makes you credible?
Ready to be a thought leader?

Podcast Notes

If you are a Generation X woman business leader and want to discover how to become a thought leader in three steps and why it’s important to your career, then you’re in the right place. The benefits to becoming a thought leader are so you can be more visible and impact more people, create those opportunities for yourself and your company, and gain that competitive advantage. What is the definition of a thought leader? My definition of a thought leader is:

You have solid industry experience of 15+ years

(It’s an industry that you love, you’re passionate for, you enjoy, you’re already involved in, you’re already reading on it, you read up on it and learn)

You can provide all different communication at different levels in the company
You have a track record of success
You are a high achiever
You are strategic
You are visionary

Female Thought Leader In 3 Simple Steps

MEMORABLE, MAGNIFY, MONETIZE

#1 MEMORABLE

This is memorable. Of what is your motivation. Why do you want to be a thought leader? What is your why? What is unique about you? This is probably what you’re doing already. You’re already a thought leader and you probably just don’t know it. You already know what your why is. You already know what your motivation is. It’s just putting a little of framework around it and making sure you can articulate that. It’s also looking at what you’re great at. What you’ve achieved over the years. What accomplishments or results or awards. What do people ask you to help with? What are you good at? What are those soft skills? I can tell you that this not your job title.

You are not your job title.

This is not CIO. This is not VP of Marketing. This is not Director of FP&A. This is skills you take with you that are transferable. These are the results. It’s also the value you provide. Another way to be memorable is the value that you provide, so you’re very specific about who you help and how you help them because you understand that audience and that pain that they’re going through because that’s a former version of yourself. If you’re a CIO, then it’s probably VP of IT and before that, it was director of IT and then … it’s those previous levels that you’re at that you’re able to help because you know what they’re suffering from. It’s a previous version of yourself. That’s how to be memorable as a thought leader.

#2 MAGNIFY

How to magnify what you’re good at and what you’re already sharing as your thought leadership. Who do you share it with and how do you make sure that you’re credible?

Content

What you share as your thought leadership is what you’re already saying and doing and repeating and become a female thought leader in 3 simple steps:

Methodologies
Approach
Tips and tricks
Shortcuts
Cheat sheets

It’s all that information that you’re already sharing, but it’s probably meaning that you need to formalize it more. By formalizing it, I mean you need to put it online so more people could consume it. We want you to take that content and magnify it beyond your division or your department and to your company and to your network and to your industry and to that global arena. That’s how you become a Generation X female thought leader. Take that information and you spread it out across your community.

What is your community and where do you build it?

Your community and network are going to be online, and it’s going to be offline. Online it could be a blog post. It could be something that you publish on an online paper. It could be a LinkedIn article you share or you create. It could also be something offline. It could be even a quarterly business meeting at your company where you’re leading and sharing some techniques or something that you did successfully that others can learn from. It could spoke at a conference, attending a forum.

Anything … a user group or community of like-minded folks you’re sharing ideas. That’s building a community.

Types of folks in your community

It’s also the folks you have in that community. You’re going to have three different people in that community. You’re going to have consumers. You’re going to have purchasers and you’re going to have influencers. The consumers of your information are going to vary depending on the purpose and why and what you’re sharing.

For example, if you’re looking at building your team and you need employees, then the consumer would be a potential employee. If you’re looking at getting a promotion and raising your visibility within a company, then the consumer would be your boss. If you’re looking at speaking at a conference, then the consumer would be the conference attendees.

Then the same thing with the purchasers. It’s going to be different purchasers depending on how you want to monetize that, and we’ll get that in the step. There are consumers, purchasers, and influencers. The consumers are the ones that use and consume your information. The purchasers are the ones that have the money. The influencers are the ones that will influence the purchasers. If you’re looking to get a project or a promotion or lead a new team in a company, this could be your advocates in the company. This could be the other folks that you work with that also communicate that they want to help you and partner with you to get that promotion or that additional responsibility.

Credibility

Now, not only do you have this community where you resonate and you have the credibility because it’s information that you share. It’s what you say, but it’s also what other people say about you. This can be as a recommendation. It could be a testimonial. It could write a letter of reference. It could be an introduction. Your credibility is magnified when other people say excellent information about you.

#3 MONETIZE

Besides being memorable and magnifying, your information as a thought leader is to monetize it and become a female thought leader in 3 simple steps. Monetize doesn’t always mean money… it results from the product.

Product

The product is typically going to be your raise or promotion or exposure. Maybe new team that you’re thinking about getting or a new initiative you want to lead, a new project you want to run, a new territory. It could be a book or a speech.

How that is monetized is how you deliver it – it is speaking, writing, communicating, verbal, consulting, inspiring. It’s how you deliver that message, that thought leadership.

Promotion

And then finally the promotion part of that monetization. Sometimes it may mean a raise, so there’s a monetized value, but it also may mean if you are publishing a book, it means it’s readers. If you’re speaking at an event, it could be people that are watching you and listening to you. If it’s raising your visibility outside of your department and your division, it’s getting seen and being visible, and those are the end results. It is the ability to do all of those in whatever order you want, but it is making you more visible so you can effect people as a thought leader. It creates so those opportunities, because you know and understand that as you keep moving up the ladder, there’s fewer and fewer opportunities.

You want those ways to stand out and be memorable and magnify that message so we have that competitive advantage with our colleagues and our peers, so we’re also helping them, but we’re also sharing that information so it’s giving us that competitive advantage.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. For the show notes, please go to http://kimdsnyder.com/001 Please let me know if you have questions.